Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Okay, Now I'm Some Lefty Nutjob?

And what is messed up is...the police state we are becoming. I have claimed that the strange thing is the left won't face this.

Well, that article in the Nation faced it. Well done.

Two things need to happen.

1. The left needs to admit that the state=coercion, which can metastasize into violence, and does so metastasize.
2. Libertarians need to admit that Karl Marx was right about concentrated corporate power. It's every bit as dangerous, and in fact in most important ways it's no different from, the worst aspects of the state. So, ipso facto, concentrated corporate power=coercion (see above about metastasis).

We have all been complicit. It's tempting to want to support something. But the two state sponsored parties have hoodwinked us. The third term of the Bush Presidency going on under Mr. Obama is just a continuation of the same ghastly trends. Gitmo. Patrio Act abuses. Unlimited detention. State murder of American citizens without any kind of due process. Oi. All of a sudden I want to see if Alexander Cockburn wants to have lunch.

Mungo,Please, don't go Ron Paul on us (80% right, 20% wacky). You don't define something based on the exception to the rule. Large corporations are NOT like the State; they can't arrest you, execute you, deny you the right to come or go, prevent you from finding a job you like. Only the very biggest have anything approaching real power, and it pales besides that of the state. And those large ones aren't all (or even mostly) malevolent.And google the phrase "Karl Marx was right." Youse got strange bedfellows.

Gene,Your assertion that they rely on the state supports the fact that corporations can't do these things -- only the state can.I'm trying to picture the scenario where "in the absence of the state, they would just do it for themselves." This is the closest thing I could find; an oil company, of sorts, meting out rough justice in the absence of the state.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4TdPxOXuYw

Wait... the kind of "corporate" what makes the state more powerful in a security state apparatus way isn't your father's free-market goods provider. Identify and tax *all* Ricardian rents tomorrow to the limit of said taxes' ability to extract revenue, and Bob's your uncle. It's corporate/government interfaces/overlaps that create the problems. And sucking all the lovely lucre out of the thing fixes it in a very short interval of time.

Mungo,Look what you've started. "We need to do something about corporate power." That means either the mobs with pitchforks burn the m-fers down or the, ahhh, government just taxes them into their proper place, as Les suggests. And you can count on the bureaucrats to only go after the dangerously powerful companies who are too close to the gover....uh...I'm sure this will work somehow.